


In All My Spite

by ughineedcoffee



Series: The Runt of the Litter [37]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Absent John Winchester, Dean is good with kids, Gen, Meltdown/Tantrum, Parental Dean, Parental Sam, little sister - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 10:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30037596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ughineedcoffee/pseuds/ughineedcoffee
Summary: For the first time in a long time, Anna throws a tantrum (she's seven). Sam is beyond confused, but Dean seems to know exactly what he's doing.
Series: The Runt of the Litter [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112966
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	In All My Spite

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos, guys. I'm posting this chapter now only because I finished it after work last night at like 11:30 and I honestly just want to post it.
> 
> DomiH wanted to see Anna somewhere from ages 6-8, and I got multiple requests to see her throw a tantrum. So here's seven-year-old Anna throwing a tantrum.

Curled up on the backseat with her stuffed frog pressed into her chest, Anna stared out the window at the foggy night sky. The stars were still there on nights like this, Dean had once explained to her. They were just all covered up, so she couldn’t see them. It seemed only right they would be covered up on the night their father showed up for all of fifteen minutes and then left again, racing away in his old truck to go after the demon that was still picking their family apart at every turn.

The car was quiet the way it usually was when they were still on the road this late at night. But this wasn’t like most of those times. Nobody was sleeping, but nobody was talking or even breathing loud enough to be heard. There was no music playing softly in the background. There wasn’t even the occasional squeak of leather as somebody shifted in their seat. Inside the Impala, it was dead silent.

They drove like that for hours.

()()()

“Put your toys away and come eat,” Sam prompted for the third time in a few minutes. He put his hands on his hips and stared down the seven year old on the motel carpet who was glaring at him with venom. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to him, but his sister seemed to think differently. 

Anna released a grumpy sigh, and the deadly look on her face didn’t fade. She stood up and irritably threw the lego she’d been holding at the nearest wall, eliciting an immediate reaction.

“Hey!” Sam snapped at her. That got Dean’s attention from where he was standing on the other side of the room, talking on the phone. He looked over at them with a frown. “What was that?” Sam demanded, lowering his voice so as not to disturb Dean. He crouched so he was at her level, hoping that would help this interaction go a little more smoothly. “You know better than throwing things when you’re upset.”

Anna didn’t say anything, but even with her mouth closed, he could tell she was gritting her teeth. Her eyes were bloodshot, brimming with both ire and exhaustion. 

After she’d had that nightmare and barely slept the night before, it shouldn’t have been surprising to him when she’d gotten cranky earlier this morning _or_ when she’d thrown her toy over nothing. It was just such strange behavior for her that it had been catching both him and Dean off guard all day.

“Just come eat lunch,” he said, being gentler this time. “You can pick up your toys after, okay?”

Looking much angrier than the situation called for, Anna tossed her pigtails over her shoulders and strutted huffily toward the table. She climbed onto her chair, shooting Sam a dark look when he made a move to help her even though the chairs were higher than she was used to. He held his hands up in surrender and moved around to sit across from her.

“Here, Ladybug.” He reached his hands into the bag of fast food and pulled out a box for her. He set it down and opened it for her with a bright smile, hoping his mood would rub off on her. None of them had been feeling great since John’s departure, but Anna was only seven, and she was taking it the worst by far. “Grilled cheese and onion rings,” he gestured enticingly to the food. “Your favorite.”

Anna didn’t smile. She didn’t even twitch a muscle. She looked him right in the eyes with that same tired, grumpy look, and Sam knew she wasn’t going to make this easy. Anna pushed the box back toward him with both her little hands. “I don’t like grilled cheese.”

It was a petulant lie if Sam had ever heard one, and he had to take a deep breath to avoid his quiet urge to snap back an indignant, _You do too, you little shit._ He tilted his head at her and raised one eyebrow, hoping she would be reasonable enough to quit the act and eat her lunch. But seven-year-old and reasonable were antonyms, and Sam had no such luck.

“Last time you had grilled cheese, you loved it,” he reminded her, his tone light as he tried his damndest to be patient.

“Last time it wasn’t this,” Anna said evenly, crossing her arms.

Sam had never been more grateful to hear Dean’s footsteps approaching, because he hadn’t seen this attitude from Anna even once since they’d picked him up from Stanford, and he felt sure Dean would be better equipped to deal with it. “What’s _wrong_ with this?” he asked, realizing a second too late that he’d given her an opening to keep complaining.

“It’s gross,” Anna said, offering no further explanation. Clearly feeling she’d made her case, she slid off her chair only to run face first into Dean.

“Nuh-uh. Sit back down.”

“But-”

Dean fixed her with a look, and Sam watched in awe as Anna scrunched her face up angrily but sat back down in her chair, obedient. He wanted to question how in the hell Dean had managed to get her to listen just with one look, but it didn’t seem like a good time, especially considering she still wasn’t actually eating anything. 

He watched, hoping to learn something, as Dean crouched beside Anna’s chair and poked her side with one finger. “Why are you bein’ a cranky-pants?” he challenged playfully, poking her side again. She squirmed and wrinkled her nose, but her own ticklishness got the better of her, and she was smiling against her will in the next second. She obviously didn’t want to be smiling, and she forced her eyebrows down into an even deeper frown, but her mouth refused to cooperate, and she wound up releasing a high pitched giggle anyway when Dean relentlessly continued to tickle her.

“Stop,” she whined, but it trailed into an even higher giggle.

Dean finally stopped poking at her and stood up, smirking contentedly. “Eat your lunch, Rugrat,” he instructed and sat down at the chair to her right.

Anna straightened in her chair and pulled her box back toward her. She went about it more slowly than usual, but Sam was pleased to see that she actually proceeded to start eating her sandwich. He tucked away Dean’s trick in the back of his mind in case he should ever need it again. Dean really did know how to wrangle a grouchy kid in the least painful way possible, and it made Sam wonder if maybe Anna wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows but just saved the mood swings for Dean because she wasn’t as comfortable around Sam. 

The thought disheartened him. After everything, he liked to think he was securely a member of his own family again. But with Anna being so young and having so blurred a memory of him from before he’d left for school, he’d wondered about how she really saw him a number of times. Did she even think of him in the same category as she thought of Dean? Or did she think of him as a virtual stranger or temporary company? He knew he couldn’t expect her to immediately trust or love him like she trusted and loved Dean, but he liked to believe that she at least felt like he was her brother again.

“You know, you’re not gonna believe this,” Dean said, distracting Sam from his thoughts. “But I think we stumbled right into a case.”

Sam’s eyebrows popped up in surprise, but his expression quickly turned hesitant. “Really? Right off the bat?”

“What else are we supposed to do? Mope?”

Moping didn’t sound too bad to Sam. Not that he would have called it that. But taking a couple days to regroup and get some rest might not have been such a terrible plan.

“When I was at that diner pickin’ up lunch, I heard this old guy talkin’ about some people goin’ missing in the area. So I called the sheriff’s office and they confirmed it.”

“You called the sheriff’s office?”

“What can I say? I’m just a concerned citizen, Sammy.”

Sam rolled his eyes and picked up his sandwich, stuffing a stray piece of lettuce back between the slices of bread. He looked over at Dean, resigned to the idea that they would be taking on a hunt without taking any time to breathe first. This was Dean’s way, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

“What’s it look like?”

“No clue,” Dean admitted, picking up his burger. He glanced over and down at Anna as she ripped her sandwich into pieces. “You’re gonna have to eat the thing eventually, Munchkin.” She looked up at him, annoyed, and Dean just held her eyes, raising his eyebrows. She got a pouty look on her face, but she picked up a chunk of her sandwich and popped it in her mouth. Dean looked back over at Sam. “I’m thinkin’ maybe some kind of backwoods monster. There are some campgrounds closeby. It’d be easy munching grounds.”

Sam swallowed his bite of sandwich and asked, “What do you want to do?”

Dean shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt to do some digging into the local history, talk to the families of the people that have gone missing.”

“You’re going hunting again?”

Anna’s small voice drew their attention. The unspoken _like Dad_ was there for all of them to hear. So little time had passed, and being as young as she was, Anna couldn’t differentiate between Dad’s choice to hunt the demon alone and the boys’ choice to take on a case here in town. She didn’t understand the difference between Yellow Eyes and some backwoods monster, because to a child like she was, every crisis was world-ending. 

“Right here in town,” Sam assured her. He wasn’t good at reading her mind like Dean was, but he figured her concerns were with being left behind. “I could hit the library tomorrow,” he offered, looking at Dean again. He took a bite of his sandwich even as he watched Anna drop the piece of her lunch that she’d been about to put in her mouth.

“I can talk to the families,” Dean said in that _it’s settled_ tone of voice he often got when taking charge on hunts. “I’ll go after lunch. Maybe you’ll have a starting place tomorrow.”

“You’re going now?” Anna asked, sounding so heartbroken it made Sam wince. 

He looked at Dean, but their older brother seemed to be trying to take it in stride. “Well, I’d like to eat my burger first.” He’d always seemed to think that if he acted like things were fine, it would make everything easier for his younger siblings, but sometimes that backfired. Like now, because to Anna, this was a huge freaking deal.

“I wanna go with you.”

Dean took a breath and set his burger down, turning to face his sister. “You’ve got your own post-lunch plans,” he said, appearing to steel himself. Sam knew precisely where this was going, and he, too, readied himself for the oncoming storm. Anna wrinkled her nose in confusion and discontent. “You’ve been cranky all day,” Dean said reasonably. The confusion fell off Anna’s face, but it was replaced by full-on pout. “I want you to take a nap.” 

At the use of that word, Anna let out a sound that was nothing but whine. It made Sam’s brain itch a little. He knew she didn't understand that there were better ways to voice her discontent, but he couldn't stand the sound of whining. He was grateful that their sister never usually acted like this, but he was irritated to no end that today had to be such an exception.

“Just for an hour or so,” Dean promised. “Maybe I’ll even be back by the time you wake up. You won’t notice I’m gone.”

They were edging toward bargaining territory, which was dangerous when there was a whiny, overtired seven-year-old involved. She would take any opportunity to continue whining, and she took Dean’s slightly lenient tone as an opening. “But I wanna go with you,” she said again.

“I know you do,” Dean said, and Sam could hear the forced patience in his voice. He sounded just like John had the other day when explaining to them that keeping their family together was a risk he couldn’t take. “But you’ve been tired all day, and you’re gettin’ whiny.”

Anna made a sour face that said she didn’t like being called whiny. She opened her mouth, but Dean shut her down with a sharp look, and Sam was grateful for it. It didn’t look like this was going anywhere good, and he didn’t like seeing this side of their sister. 

He recalled that a few months before he’d left for school, she’d entered her tantrum stage. Those terrible twos had come on hard and fast, and all three Winchester men had researched the hell out of how to parent tantrum-throwing toddlers. They’d spent longer researching temper tantrums and meltdowns than they spent researching during the average hunt. It made him wary that the look on Anna’s face now was reminding him of that time.

“What about if I sleep after?” Anna offered, though the thought of taking a nap at all clearly pained her.

“Anna, you’re takin’ a nap,” Dean said, out of patience.

“But-”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Sam dared to sneak a look over his sandwich at Anna, and internally winced at the redness of her face. She wasn’t happy, and she was glaring right at Dean in a way that told him she didn’t like that she wasn’t getting to say her piece. He was watching when she kicked the table hard enough to knock over his cup of water. It spilled all over the tabletop, soaking the paper bags their food had come in and leaking off the edge of the table to cover Sam’s lap and puddle on the floor and his chair. He lurched out of his seat, trying to wipe off the water from the surface of his jeans and then just turned to fix Anna with a look. But Dean had beat him to the lecture. 

“Do I kick the table and knock people’s drinks over when I don’t get my way?” he asked. 

He hadn’t left room for any more whining, and Anna didn’t try to find any. She looked contrite, albeit still exhausted and deeply cranky as well. “No,” she mumbled, looking disconcertingly close to tears. 

While she didn’t often step out of line, Sam _had_ seen her do it a few times since returning, and when she did and was reprimanded, she almost never looked like _this_. He knew it was mostly because she was tired and upset over John leaving-- and a nap would help her feel better, at least on one of those counts-- but that didn’t make it easier for him to look at her watery, bloodshot eyes. She looked utterly miserable. He wondered how Dean had the heart to scold her.

“Is that gonna help? At all? Ever?” 

Anna slouched in her chair and looked down at her lap, purposely avoiding their brother’s eyes. She mumbled something that sounded like a ‘no.’

“I get that you’re angry. And upset. You don’t want to take a nap, and you don’t get why you have to. I know all that. But kickin’ the table and whining and refusing to eat your food ain’t gonna help.”

Anna didn’t say anything, but she looked even closer to tears. It probably was more because she felt like Dean was mad at her than because she felt any real guilt over kicking the table. There was an extent to which, as a little kid, she simply didn’t know better. Considering how rare this kind of stuff happened with her, Sam would have been content to let it go there. If anything, he wanted to go around the table and pick her up and hug away the tears in her eyes, but that would likely have undone all the lecturing Dean had just done-- short as his spiel had been-- and Sam knew better than to undermine him when it came to Anna. 

“Help him clean it up,” Dean instructed, being gentle again, but still not letting her off the hook.

Anna wriggled off her chair and walked toward the bathroom. She was moving sluggishly, like she had a weight on her shoulders. It made Sam wonder what was running through her seven-year-old mind. He liked to think that they had a better shot of understanding Anna as she grew up than John did. But he couldn’t, for the life of him, think like a kid. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. Maybe when she was a teenager he would understand-- though he hoped she wouldn’t struggle with half the things he had as a teen-- but for now… he just didn’t remember the way he used to think when he was a _kid_ kid.

“She just misses Dad,” Dean explained as if he could read Sam’s mind. He was better at reading both his siblings’ minds apparently. “She only gets like this when she’s upset. And it’s worse ‘cause she did’t sleep. The nap’ll help. If you want me to stay so you don’t have to worry about the attitude-”

“No, it’s fine,” Sam said. “Like you said, she’s just upset. And once she actually lays down, she’ll probably be out in minutes with how tired she’s been all day. How much trouble can she cause while she’s napping? We’ll be fine.”

“Tell you what, though, I’ll put her down before I leave. Knowin’ that kid, she’d work the puppy eyes on you and get outta the whole thing.”

Sam shot his brother a look. He may have been a bit of a softie at times, especially when Anna did pull the puppy eyes on him, but he was better at drawing the line when it was undoubtedly in her best interest to do the thing she didn’t want to do. And this nap definitely qualified as being in her best interest, however badly she wanted to get out of it.

At the sound of quiet footsteps, Sam turned and saw Anna scurrying back out from the bathroom. She still looked like she was in low spirits, but she didn’t seem so angry. She had a towel in her hands to clean up the water with, but she paused before even reaching the table to wrap her arms around Sam’s legs. She looked up at his surprised face, chin against his leg as she craned her neck back so she could see his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didden mean to spill it on you.”

“That’s okay, Ladybug,” Sam said with a comforting smile. He ruffled her hair as she pulled away and noticed she hadn’t smiled back. She was already using the towel to soak up the water from his chair. It made him feel guilty though he couldn’t say why.

Dean crumpled up the paper his burger had been on and tossed it impressively into the trash can. “You got her then?” he asked.

Sam nodded. He’d been secretly a little grateful before when Dean had offered to put her to sleep before leaving. But now that she’d apologized and seemed a little more like the kid he was used to, he felt better about the idea of being left with her for the afternoon. “I got her.”

Anna straightened and turned to look at Dean so fast that Sam was surprised she didn’t give herself whiplash. “You’re goin’ _now_?” she asked with so much concern that Sam was almost offended. Was she that upset to be staying with him instead of Dean? But he knew this wasn’t about him.

Dean didn’t try to brush off her concern this time. It hadn’t worked out so well the first time, after all. “I’m comin’ back in just a couple hours, Rugrat. I promise.”

Anna didn’t appear to be comforted by that information. It was obvious from the pout on her face that all she could think about was that Dean was leaving _now_. She didn’t care about two hours from now. She looked up at Dean again as he shrugged on his jacket and made one last ditch effort. “Please can I go?” she begged.

Dean snorted, though the disheartened look on her face was anything but funny. “You’re gonna give Sammy a complex, Anna.”

Sam rolled his eyes. It definitely stung a little that she preferred Dean over him enough to look so upset about the idea of staying with him, but he understood. Hard as it was to get over how much it stung, he did understand. At seven, Anna couldn’t be expected to get over her own feelings quite so easily as he could at twenty-two. He looked down at her and felt a puddle of dread pool in his stomach again. She had her face all scrunched up like she was either going to cry or stomp her foot. He didn’t want to see her do either, but of the two… he would’ve rather she stomped her foot. 

So, of course, she promptly started crying.

The sound of the first hiccup made Dean’s head turn sharply, a frown of worried confusion on his face. He set down the car keys he’d been about to put in his pocket and crouched down. “C’mere, Munchkin.”

Anna shook her head and used the backs of her hands to rub her eyes. Her breath hitched and quickened, but she seemed embarrassed to be crying by the way she was looking down, trying to keep her face hidden.

Dean got to his feet again and moved over toward her and Anna only cried harder. Sam reached out with one hand to gently pull her away from the table where she was resolutely staring at the damp towel and the puddle of water that was still on the floor waiting to be cleaned.

The second Sam’s hand touched her shoulder, Anna side-stepped away, grit her teeth, and her body tensed. “Hey,” Dean called after her, his voice soothing and careful. Despite his best effort to help the situation, Anna was too far gone. She wrinkled her nose, her eyes still brimming with tears and her face red. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

Both boys flinched away from the high-pitched sound, their shoulders going up to their ears in an effort to block out the sound. 

As soon as the scream ended, Sam looked back to Anna and realized that she looked almost as surprised as them at the sound she’d just let out. But she didn’t appear too concerned about it. She was still red-faced, tears and snot on her face and her breath was coming hard and fast. She may have let out a lot of tension in that scream, but she clearly wasn’t feeling any calmer as a result.

“Anna,” he tried, excessively gentle. “It’s o-” His mistake was thinking she was even capable of listening anymore. She shook her head, breathing even faster, tears still pouring down her cheeks. 

Beside him, Dean was crouched down to Anna’s level, and Sam followed his lead. She always did seem more at ease when they weren’t towering over her, and it just seemed logical that this would help them reach her.

Still, though, when Dean reached out one hand toward her, he barely had time to open his mouth before Anna was letting out another scream, this one sounding more like she was saying ‘no.’ She was still tensed from head to toe, her hands curled into fists at her sides as her whole body shook with the force of her scream. She kept shaking her head even after she’d finished screaming.

Both of them had recoiled again at the second scream, and Sam was surprised when Dean smacked him with the back of his hand and gestured that they should back off. “Are you crazy?” he whisper-yelled.

“C’mon,” Dean insisted. They stood up and stepped back. Anna was still panting and hiccuping, far from calm. She didn’t scream again, though, because nobody was trying to touch her or talk to her. She scrunched her face up even tighter than before. Sam watched nervously. He felt like they should be doing something, especially since it was so clear that she was genuinely upset, not just throwing a tantrum for the sake of throwing a tantrum.

It didn’t take long for her to explode again, but after her third and final scream of outrage, she finally quieted. Her breathing began to ease back toward normal, and though she was still hiccuping and crying, she seemed to be getting closer to a point where she would be reachable. Sam frowned, watching curiously to see what she would do next. Her eyes looked heavy, somehow even more bloodshot than before. She’d tired herself out.

“Alright,” Dean said beside him. He moved back over to Anna, and Sam stayed back on the other side of the table. He didn’t feel like he would be able to help if he followed Dean.

Anna’s breath continued to hitch, and she continued to pant with the force of all the emotions she couldn’t regulate, but she didn’t flinch away when Dean crouched beside her and reached out to gently take hold of her arm. He pulled her around to face him. “Hey. You done?” Her chin wobbled again, and more tears spilled over her eyelids to slide down her face. But she nodded. At the very least, she’d heard that Dean was talking to her. “Come here.” This time, Anna wasted no time in plastering herself against Dean. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and burrowed into him. She cried into his shoulder, but this time her tears were quiet and subdued.

It took another five minutes before she was done full-out crying. When she finally stopped, Dean eased her away and used his thumbs to wipe the tears off her cheeks. “Better?” he asked, looking her in the eyes. If it had been anybody other than Anna, Sam would have been shocked at how tender Dean was being. But she always brought out Dean’s softer side, and it was even less surprising to see than usual considering how devastated she clearly was at the moment.

Anna nodded, still sniffling and hiccuping every now and then. She seemed mostly to have herself under control. “Take a deep breath,” Dean told her calmly. His calm seemed to reach Anna, and she did as she was told, breathing slow and deep. Her demeanor improved a little more almost instantly.

Sam grabbed the box of one-ply tissues from the nightstand across the room and gave them to Dean who pulled three of them out and used them to wipe off Anna’s face, starting with her eyes and cheeks. He took out three more and wiped her nose and mouth. He gave her two and said, “Blow your nose.” It was strange to Sam seeing Dean so… parental. When they were teenagers, before Anna was born, he would have laughed out loud at the image of Dean crouched down on the floor in front of a seven-year-old who’d just thrown a full-blown scream-your-lungs-out tantrum with a handful of tissues. But now… now it didn’t even seem weird to him. This was as much a part of Dean as his love for rock music or his impressive abilities as a hunter.

“Good now?” Dean asked their sister.

Anna nodded again.

“You tired?”

She nodded again, still looking positively miserable.

Dean released a little snort of amusement. “First you’re doin’ a hyena impression, and now you’re not sayin’ anything, huh?” Anna didn’t look amused, but he poked at her side like he had earlier, and a little smile twitched on her face. He grabbed all the dirty tissues together and put them on the table as there was no trashcan within reach. “C’mere, kiddo.” For the second time, Anna plastered herself against him. He stood, lifting her up, and moved over to the closer of the two beds where he set her down.

Sam busied himself throwing away the tissues, silently half-expecting Anna to ask again if Dean was leaving. She didn’t. In fact, when he looked back over not even two minutes later, she was already asleep, and Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed, gently pushing stray curls off her face.

“Did she used to do that a lot?” Sam asked quietly a few minutes later when Dean got up and came back over to the table. “You just seemed weirdly like you knew what you were doing.”

Dean shrugged. “She never did it _a lot_. But she’s a kid. She throws tantrums.” He sighed, “It’s been a long time since she’s really had one, but I guess after this thing with Dad…” 

“If there was ever a time it would make sense, it’s now,” Sam finished the thought for him.

“I’m still gonna have to talk to her about it, but… I don’t know, man. I used to do all this research on how to deal with tantrums and shit. I mean, she never threw them much, but I always wanted to make sure I was dealing with ‘em right when she _did_ throw ‘em.” Dean shrugged off his jacket, and Sam realized that his brother had no plans of going anywhere this afternoon even though Anna wouldn’t even know if he left now.

“And?” Sam asked.

“All those parenting websites and magazines say something different. I eventually realized it was better to just feel it out.” Dean shrugged. “She’s not the type of kid that throws ‘em for no reason, and it’s usually not that hard to figure out what she actually needs when she hits her limit like that. And hey, it worked out. She tired herself right out, and now she’s in dreamland, so…”

“Yeah, well, I’m just glad you knew what to do at all, because, man, if that had happened five minutes after you left, we’d have been screwed.”

“It didn’t,” Dean said matter of factly. “Crisis averted. I’ll talk to her when she wakes up, and until then, I say we see what we can find out about this case from here.”

_La Fin_


End file.
